Monday, September 12, 2016

Another Miss Clue Update

The Miss Clue people made an announcement at the end of Chapter 13. They've hired Lani Minella, the voice of Nancy Drew, for their next two games. Combine this with the fact that their next game has the same premise as the upcoming Nancy Drew #32, and it feels kind of like a slap in the face to Her Interactive.

I mean, Miss Clue started life as a Nancy Drew knockoff, hosted by a knockoff of Disney's Magic Kingdom MMO, but there's a difference between "we're riding on the coattails of Nancy Drew's success" and "we want to replace her completely".

Either way, it's good that the Miss Clue people have finally decided to hire a voice actor, because the voice acting in their games is not good. It's obvious they only have 3-4 people doing all the voices, especially when they reuse the same voices for every single game. The one actor, in particular, delivers every line with all the enthusiasm of someone reading the dictionary.

Thankfully, they seem to have given up on having extended conversations between two characters with the same voice actress, like they did in the first game. In the current game, Miss Clue occasionally lapses into a Midwestern accent. Maybe her voice actress is from the Midwest.

As I said earlier, they announced that they're hiring Lani Minella for their next two games. Game #2 is another Regency-era game. I'm wondering if they'll sell that game for money, like they did with Peril in Pemberley. Maybe that's the company's plan? Every year, they release two Miss Clue games for free, but the third game is always a Regency-era game that you have to purchase to play. It would explain their outright weird decision to tie this series to Pride and Prejudice, if only the Regency-era games are sold in stores/online.

On a final note, Chapter 13 was originally called "Chapter 12 Part 2". That's the main reason why I don't like the episodic nature of "Miss Clue". The developers clearly don't finish every chapter, before the intended release date. Sometimes that means chapters get split in half, sometimes that means chapters are released with game-breaking glitches, and it always means that certain items and areas are off-limits to the player because they haven't been programmed yet. The name of this chapter has since been changed to "The Capture, Part 1", which makes me think it's finale time.

3 comments:

This is part of the reason why I don't play the Miss Clue games any more. They're rather bad and blatantly obvious rip-offs of the much better and more successful Nancy Drew games. Now, they aren't even trying to hide it...it feels like they're trying to capitalize on HeR's break in game-releases and their decision to hire a new voice actress who sounds Nancy's age. It makes me a little angry, honestly.

I Always thought the Miss Clue games were pretty bad. They are obvious ripoffs, and I don't understand why they felt the need to make her a relative of the P&P characters. That's just really random, and probably just a way to get people's attention even if it doesn't come into the game much.